AFTERGLOW.
Mary, with Alice holding one hand, flowers in the other, was walking one
day down the central avenue of the old Girod Cemetery, breaking the
silence of the place only by the soft grinding of her footsteps on the
shell-walk, and was just entering a transverse alley, when she stopped.
Just at hand a large, broad woman, very plainly dressed, was drawing
back a single step from the front of a tomb, and dropping her hands from
a coarse vase of flowers that she had that moment placed on the narrow
stone shelf under the tablet. The blossoms touched, without hiding, the
newly cut name. She had hung a little plaster crucifix against it from
above. She must have heard the footfall so near by, and marked its
stoppage; but, with the oblivion common to the practisers of her
religion, she took no outward notice. She crossed herself, sank upon her
knees, and with her eyes upon the shrine she had made remained thus. The
tears ran down Mary's face. It was Madame Zenobie. They went and lived
together.
The name of the street where their house stood has slipped me, as has
that of the clean, unfrequented, round-stoned way up which one looked
from the small cottage's veranda, and which, running down to their old
arched gate, came there to an end, as if that were a pretty place to
stop at in the shade until evening. Grass grows now, as it did then,
between the round stones; and in the towering sycamores of the reddened
brick sidewalk the long, quavering note of the cicada parts the wide
summer noonday silence. The stillness yields to little else, save now
and then the tinkle of a mule-bell, where in the distance the softly
rumbling street-car invites one to the centre of the town's activities,
or the voice of some fowl that, having laid an egg, is asserting her
right to the credit of it. Some forty feet back, within a mossy brick
wall that stands waist-high, surmounted by a white, open fence, the
green wooden balls on top of whose posts are full eight feet above the
sidewalk, the cottage stands high up among a sweet confusion of pale
purple and pink crape myrtles, oleanders white and red, and the
bristling leaves and plumes of white bells of the Spanish bayonet,
all in the shade of lofty magnolias, and one great pecan.
"And this is little Alice," said Doctor Sevier with gentle gravity, as,
on his first visit to the place, he shook hands with Mary at the top of
the veranda stairs, and laid his fingers upon the child's forehead. He
smiled into her uplifted face as her eyes examined his, and stroked the
little crown as she turned her glance silently upon her mother, as if to
inquire if this were a trustworthy person. Mary led the way to chairs
at the veranda's end where the south breeze fanned them, and Alice
retreated to her mother's side until her silent question should be
settled.
It was still May. They spoke the praises of the day whose sun was
just setting. And Mary commended the house, the convenience of its
construction, its salubrity; and also, and especially, the excellence
and goodness of Madame Zenobie. What a complete and satisfactory
arrangement! Was it not? Did not the Doctor think so?
But the Doctor's affirmative responses were unfrequent, and quite
without enthusiasm; and Mary's face, wearing more cheer than was felt
within, betrayed, moreover, the feeling of one who, having done the best
she knew, falls short of commendation.
She was once more in deep black. Her face was pale, and some of its
lines had yielded up a part of their excellence. The outward curves of
the rose had given place to the inward curves of the lily--nay, hardly
all that; for as she had never had the full red queenliness of the one,
neither had she now the severe sanctitude of the other; that soft glow
of inquiry, at once so blithe and so self-contained, so modest and so
courageous, humble, yet free, still played about her saddened eyes and
in her tones. Through the glistening sadness of those eyes smiled
resignation; and although the Doctor plainly read care about them and
about the mouth, it was a care that was forbearing to feed upon itself,
or to take its seat on her brow. The brow was the old one; that is, the
young. The joy of life's morning was gone from it forever; but a
chastened hope was there, and one could see peace hovering just above
it, as though it might in time alight. Such were the things that divided
her austere friend's attention as she sat before him, seeking, with
timid smiles and interrogative argument, for this new beginning of life
some heartiness of approval from him.
"Doctor," she plucked up courage to say at last, with a geniality that
scantily hid the inner distress, "you don't seem pleased."
"I can't say I am, Mary. You've provided for things in sight; but I see
no provision for unseen contingencies. They're sure to come, you know.
How are you going to meet them?"
"Well," said Mary, with slow, smiling caution, "there's my two thousand
dollars that you've put at interest for me."
"Why, no; you've already counted the interest on that as part of your
necessary income."
"Doctor, 'the Lord will provide,' will he not?"
"No."
"Why, Doctor!"--
"No, Mary; you've got to provide. He's not going to set aside the laws
of nature to cover our improvidence. That would be to break faith with
all creation for the sake of one or two creatures."
"No; but still, Doctor, without breaking the laws of nature, he will
provide. It's in his word."
"Yes, and it ought to be in his word--not in ours. It's for him to say
to us, not for us to say to him. But there's another thing, Mary."
"Yes, sir."
"It's this. But first I'll say plainly you've passed through the fires
of poverty, and they haven't hurt you. You have one of those
imperishable natures that fire can't stain or warp."
"O Doctor, how absurd!" said Mary, with bright genuineness, and a tear
in either eye. She drew Alice closer.
"Well, then, I do see two ill effects," replied the Doctor. "In the
first place, as I've just tried to show you, you have caught a little of
the _recklessness_ of the poor."
"I was born with it," exclaimed Mary, with amusement.
"Maybe so," replied her friend; "at any rate you show it." He was
silent.
"But what is the other?" asked Mary.
"Why, as to that, I may mistake; but--you seem inclined to settle down
and be satisfied with poverty."
"Having food and raiment," said Mary, smiling with some archness, "to be
therewith content."
"Yes, but"--the physician shook his head--"that doesn't mean to be
satisfied. It's one thing to be content with God's providence, and it's
another to be satisfied with poverty. There's not one in a thousand that
I'd venture to say it to. He wouldn't understand the fine difference.
But you will. I'm sure you do."
"Yes, I do."
"I know you do. You know poverty has its temptations, and warping
influences, and debasing effects, just as truly as riches have. See how
it narrows our usefulness. Not always, it is true. Sometimes our best
usefulness keeps us poor. That's poverty with a good excuse. But that's
not poverty satisfying, Mary"--
"No, of course not," said Mary, exhibiting a degree of distress that the
Doctor somehow overlooked.
"It's merely," said he, half-extending his open palm,--"it's merely
poverty accepted, as a good soldier accepts the dust and smut that are a
necessary part of the battle. Now, here's this little girl."--As his
open white hand pointed toward Alice she shrank back; but the Doctor
seemed blind this afternoon and drove on.--"In a few years--it will not
seem like any time at all--she'll be half grown up; she'll have wants
that ought to be supplied."
"Oh! don't," exclaimed Mary, and burst into a flood of tears; and the
Doctor, while she hid them from her child, sat silently loathing his own
stupidity.
"Please, don't mind it," said Mary, stanching the flow. "You were not so
badly mistaken. I wasn't satisfied, but I was about to surrender." She
smiled at herself and her warlike figure of speech.
He looked away, passed his hand across his forehead and must have
muttered audibly his self-reproach: for Mary looked up again with a
faint gleam of the old radiance in her face, saying:--
"I'm glad you didn't let me do it. I'll not do it. I'll take up the
struggle again. Indeed, I had already thought of one thing I could do,
but I--I--in fact, Doctor, I thought you might not like it."
"What was it?"
"It was teaching in the public schools. They're in the hands of the
military government, I am told. Are they not?"
"Yes."
"Still," said Mary, speaking rapidly, "I say I'll keep up the"--
But the Doctor lifted his hand.
"No, no. There's to be no more struggle."
"No?" Mary tried to look pleasantly incredulous.
"No; and you're not going to be put upon anybody's bounty, either. No.
What I was going to say about this little girl here was this,--her name
is Alice, is it?"
"Yes."
The mother dropped an arm around the child, and both she and Alice
looked timidly at the questioner.
"Well, by that name, Mary, I claim the care of her."
The color mounted to Mary's brows, but the Doctor raised a finger.
"I mean, of course, Mary, only in so far as such care can go without
molesting your perfect motherhood, and all its offices and pleasures."
Her eyes filled again, and her lips parted; but the Doctor was not going
to let her reply.
"Don't try to debate it, Mary. You must see you have no case. Nobody's
going to take her from you, nor do any other of the foolish things, I
hope, that are so often done in such cases. But you've called her
Alice, and Alice she must be. I don't propose to take care of her for
you"--
"Oh, no; of course not," interjected Mary.
"No," said the Doctor; "you'll take care of her for me. I intended it
from the first. And that brings up another point. You mustn't teach
school. No. I have something else--something better--to suggest. Mary,
you and John have been a kind of blessing to me"--
She would have interrupted with expressions of astonishment and dissent,
but he would not hear them.
"I think I ought to know best about that," he said. "Your husband taught
me a great deal, I think. I want to put some of it into practice. We had
a--an understanding, you might say--one day toward the--end--that I
should do for him some of the things he had so longed and hoped to
do--for the poor and the unfortunate."
"I know," said Mary, the tears dropping down her face.
"He told you?" asked the Doctor.
She nodded.
"Well," resumed the Doctor, "those may not be his words precisely, but
it's what they meant to me. And I said I'd do it. But I shall need
assistance. I'm a medical practitioner. I attend the sick. But I see a
great deal of other sorts of sufferers; and I can't stop for them."
"Certainly not," said Mary, softly.
"No," said he; "I can't make the inquiries and investigations about them
and study them, and all that kind of thing, as one should if one's help
is going to be help. I can't turn aside for all that. A man must have
one direction, you know. But you could look after those things"--
"I?"
"Certainly. You could do it just as I--just as John--would wish to see
it done. You're just the kind of person to do it right."
"O Doctor, don't say so! I'm not fitted for it at all."
"I'm sure you are, Mary. You're fitted by character and outward
disposition, and by experience. You're full of cheer"--
She tearfully shook her head. But he insisted.
"You will be--for _his_ sake, as you once said to me. Don't you
remember?"
She remembered. She recalled all he wished her to: the prayer she had
made that, whenever death should part her husband and her, he might not
be the one left behind. Yes, she remembered; and the Doctor spoke
again:--
"Now, I invite you to make this your principal business. I'll pay you
for it, regularly and well, what I think it's worth; and it's worth no
trifle. There's not one in a thousand that I'd trust to do it, woman
or man; but I know you will do it all, and do it well, without any
nonsense. And if you want to look at it so, Mary, you can just consider
that it's John doing it, all the time; for, in fact, that's just what it
is. It beats sewing, Mary, or teaching school, or making preserves, I
think."
"Yes," said Mary, looking down on Alice, and stroking her head.
"You can stay right here where you are, with Madame Zenobie, as you had
planned; but you'll give yourself to this better work. I'll give you a
_carte blanche_. Only one mistake I charge you not to make; don't go and
come from day to day on the assumption that only the poor are poor, and
need counsel and attention."
"I know that would be a mistake," said Mary.
"But I mean more than that," continued the Doctor. "You must keep a
hold on the rich and comfortable and happy. You want to be a medium
between the two, identified with both as completely as possible. It's a
hard task, Mary. It will take all your cunning."
"And more, too," replied she, half-musing.
"You know," said the Doctor, "I'm not to appear in the matter, of
course; I'm not to be mentioned: that must be one of the conditions."
Mary smiled at him through her welling eyes.
"I'm not fit to do it," she said, folding the wet spots of her
handkerchief under. "But still, I'd rather not refuse. If I might try
it, I'd like to do so. If I could do it well, it would be a finer
monument--to _him_"--
"Than brass or marble," said Dr. Sevier. "Yes, more to his liking."
"Well," said Mary again, "if you think I can do it I'll try it."
"Very well. There's one place you can go to, to begin with, to-morrow
morning, if you choose. I'll give you the number. It's just across here
in Casa Calvo street."
"Narcisse's aunt?" asked Mary, with a soft gleam of amusement.
"Yes. Have you been there already?"
She had; but she only said:--
"There's one thing that I'm afraid will go against me, Doctor, almost
everywhere." She lifted a timid look.
The Doctor looked at her inquiringly, and in his private thought said
that it was certainly not her face or voice.
"Ah!" he said, as he suddenly recollected. "Yes; I had forgotten. You
mean your being a Union woman."
"Yes. It seems to me they'll be sure to find it out. Don't you think it
will interfere?"
The Doctor mused.
"I forgot that," he repeated and mused again. "You can't blame us, Mary;
we're at white heat"--
"Indeed I don't!" said Mary, with eager earnestness.
He reflected yet again.
"But--I don't know, either. It may be not as great a drawback as you
think. Here's Madame Zenobie, for instance"--
Madame Zenobie was just coming up the front steps from the garden,
pulling herself up upon the veranda wearily by the balustrade. She came
forward, and, with graceful acknowledgment, accepted the physician's
outstretched hand and courtesied.
"Here's Madame Zenobie, I say; you seem to get along with her."
Mary smiled again, looked up at the standing quadroon, and replied in a
low voice:--
"Madame Zenobie is for the Union herself."
"Ah! no-o-o!" exclaimed the good woman, with an alarmed face. She lifted
her shoulders and extended what Narcisse would have called the han' of
rep-u-diation; then turned away her face, lifted up her underlip with
disrelish, and asked the surrounding atmosphere,--"What I got to do wid
Union? Nuttin' do wid Union--nuttin' do wid Confederacie!" She moved
away, addressing the garden and the house by turns. "Ah! no!" She went
in by the front door, talking Creole French, until she was beyond
hearing.
Dr. Sevier reached out toward the child at Mary's knee. Here was one who
was neither for nor against, nor yet a fear-constrained neutral. Mary
pushed her persuasively toward the Doctor, and Alice let herself be
lifted to his lap.
"I used to be for it myself," he said, little dreaming he would one day
be for it again. As the child sank back into his arm, he noticed a
miniature of her father hanging from her neck. He took it into his
fingers, and all were silent while he looked long upon the face.
By and by he asked Mary for an account of her wanderings. She gave it.
Many of the experiences, that had been hard and dangerous enough when
she was passing through them, were full of drollery when they came to be
told, and there was much quiet amusement over them. The sunlight faded
out, the cicadas hushed their long-drawn, ear-splitting strains, and the
moon had begun to shine in the shadowy garden when Dr. Sevier at length
let Alice down and rose to take his lonely homeward way, leaving Mary to
Alice's prattle, and, when that was hushed in slumber, to gentle tears
and whispered thanksgivings above the little head.